11 Killed As Libyan Military Plane Crashes In Tunisia Due To An Apparent Engine Failure

The wreckage of a Libyan military plane is seen in Grombalia town, south of Tunis, Feb. 21, 2014. The military rescue plane crashed on Friday near the Tunisian capital, killing all 11 crew on board after an engine failure, the TAP state news agency said.
Reuters/Stringer

nvestigators work at the site of a plane crash near Grombalia town, south of Tunis, Feb. 21, 2014. The Libyan military plane carrying medical patients crashed early on Friday near Tunisia's capital, killing all 11 crew and passengers on board after an engine failure, Tunisian authorities said.
Reuters/Anis Mili

People stand at the site of a plane crash near Grombalia town, south of Tunis, Feb. 21, 2014. The Libyan military plane carrying medical patients crashed early on Friday near Tunisia's capital, killing all 11 crew and passengers on board after an engine failure, Tunisian authorities said.
Reuters/Anis Mili

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A Libyan military plane carrying doctors and patients crashed Friday due to an apparent engine failure near Tunisia’s capital of Tunis, killing all 11 passengers and crew on board, media reports said citing local authorities.

According to reports, the Antonov plane went down after the pilot tried to land in farmland near the Grombalia region, about 30 miles southeast of Tunis, and burst into flames.

"The plane crashed... with 11 people on board -- three doctors, two patients and six crew members," Mongi El Kadhi, an emergency services spokesman, reportedly said. But, there has been no word about the identities of the passengers who died in the crash.

Defense spokesman Tawfik Rahmouni told a state news agency that the plane's last communication, stating that the plane’s engines had caught fire, was made to the Tunis-Carthage International Airport before contact was lost.

Army units, a military medical team and civil protection services reportedly rushed to the scene to put out the fire and extract the bodies. The Libyan flag was still visible on the tail of the plane amid the burnt wreckage.

A team of investigators at the crash site managed to recover the black box flight recorder to establish the cause of the apparent engine failure. Sofiene Bejaoui, an air-traffic control official, said the aircraft was a Soviet-designed twin-propeller Antonov-26.

This is the second crash involving a military plane in North Africa in the past two weeks. An Algerian military transport plane crashed into a mountain due to bad weather conditions on Feb. 11, killing about 77 people, making it the country’s worst air disaster in a decade.